The grisly hit-job on Khashoggi has implications far beyond its exposure of the Saudi Crown Prince as brutal and reckless. In Jerusalem and D.C., they’re mourning their whole strategic concept for the Mideast – not least, for countering Iran
But its implications go deeper than the tragedy visited upon Khashoggi’s family and fiancee. It raises fundamental questions for the United States and Israel about their whole strategic concept in the Middle East.
On the one hand, cynics could argue that the brazenness of Khashoggi’s murder differed only in degree, than kind, from the longstanding behavior of Arab autocrats, including those allied with the United States.
There are no boy scouts in the Middle East, and the U.S.-Saudi alliance has persisted through decades of repressive Saudi policies against their own people.
American interests could still be served by some of the economic and social reforms that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has championed, and by the advancement of the joint strategic goals of checking Iranian aggression in the region. Those considerations cannot be so easily dismissed.
But the Khashoggi murder, beyond obliterating red lines of immorality, also points to the fundamental unreliability of Saudi Arabiaunder MBS as a strategic partner. What happened in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul echoes words once used to describe Napoleon’s elimination of an opponent: “It’s worse than a crime. It’s a mistake.” One might add, a strategic mistake.
Already, MBS had proven himself to be a reckless and impulsive actor in conducting Saudi foreign policy. His legitimate campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi in Yemen has been prosecuted with total disregard for the vast suffering of civilians it has caused. His forced resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri blew up in his face.
Saudi Arabia’s all-out blockade of Qatar has distracted the Gulf states from their common goal of containing Iran and produced minimal results. And MBS’s severing of relations with Canada over a tweet criticizing Saudi detentions of human rights activists was an absurd overreaction.
But now, clearly at MBS’s direction, a terrible murder was committed, essentially out in the open. And the Saudis lied about it to President Trump for days. They are still lying.
Trump himself may care little, motivated by his own amorality or the over-hyped job-creating impact of Saudi weapons orders.
But MBS did not take into account that in ordering the Khashoggi hit, he crossed all lines of acceptability to the American public and the bipartisan membership of Congress. Indeed, the harshest criticisms and calls for consequences have come from Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.
Again, one can be cynical about this. Saudi repression is not new, and perhaps the American political system could accommodate it if it stayed below a certain level of visibility. The outcry was not nearly as loud as perhaps it should have been over the imprisonment of Saudi women’s rights activists, which took place at the same time that women were finally given the right to drive cars.
But MBS miscalculated badly by not understanding that the kidnapping and dismembering of a U.S. resident journalist, whose only crime was expressing his views, simply was more than Americans could tolerate.
One cannot flaunt that kind of brutality and expect business as usual with the United States. Trump himself may not care, as his courtship of Vladimir Putin, who also murders journalists, suggests. But the American people have their limits, and may indeed hold friendly governments to a higher standard. They expect that allies, at least, not implicate the United States in brazen crimes.
The reasons for that are debatable. The grisly details of the killing are part of it. But Khashoggi’s murder also touches on broader international trends of illiberalism and a crackdown on truth-seeking journalists. The context was not simply MBS silencing a Saudi critic.
That MBS did not understand that reality or could not assess it, that he thought he could get away with it and had no adviser willing or able to check his impulses, raises significant questions about his judgment and reliability, not to speak of the definitive answers it provides about his morality.
For Israel, this sordid episode raises the prospects that the anchor of the new Middle East realities it has sought to promote – an Israeli-Sunni Arab coalition, under a U.S. umbrella, to check Iran and Sunni jihadists – cannot be counted upon.
And Israel must be careful how it plays its hand. There will, without question, be a U.S. response to Khashoggi’s murder, even if it is resisted by the Trump administration. It will not lead to a total dismantlement of the U.S.-Saudi alliance, but Congressional and public revulsion will have its price.
The price could include significant restrictions on arms sales that had been contemplated. It is already leading key U.S. investors to distance themselves from the major development projects MBS has promoted. At a minimum, there will be no replay of the warm, PR-friendly visit by MBS to multiple U.S. cities last March, no more lionizing of him in the American press as a reformer who will reshape the Middle East.
Israel, which has a clear interest in keeping Saudi Arabia in the fold of U.S. allies to maximize the strategic alignment on Iran, will need to avoid becoming MBS’s lobbyist in Washington. Israel’s coordination with its partners in the region is still necessary and desirable. Simple realpolitik requires it. But there is a new risk of reputational damage from a close association with Saudi Arabia.
It won’t be easy for Israel to navigate these waters, as the Washington foreign policy establishment has quickly splintered into anti-Iran and anti-Saudi camps. The idea that the United States should equally oppose Iranian and Saudi brutality toward their peoples, and not let MBS’s crimes lead to a lessening of pressure on Iran over its malign regional activities, is in danger of being lost.
For Israelis, that may be the biggest blow in the fallout of Khashoggi’s murder. MBS, in his obsession with silencing his critics, has actually undermined the attempt to build an international consensus to pressure Iran.
The damage is broad. Trump may be an outlier. But what Member of Congress, what European leader, would be willing to sit with MBS for a consultation on Iran now?
That is the greatest evidence of MBS’s strategic blindness, and the damage will likely persist as long as he rules the kingdom.
Daniel B. Shapiro is Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and Senior Director for the Middle East and North Africa in the Obama Administration. Twitter: @DanielBShapiro
I hadn’t realized until I looked more closely that the author is Obama’s former Ambassador to Israel, who is well-known for sharing his boss’s anti-Israel bias. Now works for Tel Aviv University’s think tank, which is a leftist outfit. I completely unreliable source of information. In addition to everything else, the Obama administration were great friends of Erdogan. His eagerness to blame MBS for the presumed murder is actually good reason to believe that the Saudis are innocent, and are being framed not only by the Turks, but by people in Washington eager to sabotage MBS’s behind-the-scenes cooperation with Israel and opposition to Qatar and Iran. Come to think of it, the U.S. press organs who have adopted the Turkish claims are also anti-Israel and sympathetic to the Brotherhood.
I have yet to see any real evidence in this case of any wrongdoing, once Khashoggi entered the embassy. All I have seen, is disreputable actors such as the Turkish government and CNN, making unfounded statements.
1. Why have the Turks not released their “audio recordings” of alleged torture? The obvious answer is that if such evidence exists, it came from a Turkish bugging device. It certainly did not come from Khashoggi’s wristwatch.
2. Turkish forensic crews have been in both the embassy and the ambassador’s residence. Khashoggi was presumably “dismembered with a saw while still alive”. That would have splashed blood everywhere. Where is the evidence of this blood?
3. If there was a murder, where is the body? or even a trace?
4. It has been two weeks since the Muslim Brotherhood journalist was last seen. That is enough time for a “hit team” to make an attempt at concealing evidence, but also more than enough time for the Turks to fabricate it.
I’m fed up with “trial by leaks and media”.
Like everyone else, this Haaretz writer takes for granted that MBS and the Saudis killed Kashoggi. Here’s what I posted about this allegation on a similar article a short time ago:
No one seems to have considered the very real possibility that it was Erdogan, not Crown Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia, who had Kashoggi murdered. But if you look at the circumstances carefully, this is a very real possibility.
The apparent murder of Kashoggi would have made so little sense for Saudi Arabia to have done it, at least in the place where it occurred and the manner in which (according to the Turkish government) it occurred, that I suspect that the Turks, not the Saudis, murdered him. While the Saudis would have risked everything and gained nothing from murdering Kashoggi, or even attempting to kidnap him, in their own consulate in a hostile foreign country, where surely they must have known their consulates were kept under constant surveillance, the Turks had something to gain by murdering Kashoggi and then blaming it on their Saudi rivals. Prince Mohammed bin Sultan (known as MBS), was an enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Qatar, all of which are strongly supported by the Erdogan regime. What better way to discredit the Saudis, reduce their influence, and bring about the dismissal of their chief Saudi enemy (MBS), than committing a murder of a high-profile individual and then blaming it on the Saudis.
But would Erdogan really murder a personal friend and supporter like Kashoggi to accomplish his purpose? I believe that his record shows he is ruthless enough to sacrifice anyone to achieve his political goals.He has had thousands of people put to death since the failed coup against him two years ago. Any many Turks suspect that he engineered the coup himself in order to provide a pretext for the subsequent massive purge.
It is very possible that Kashoggi was continuing to report to SaudiI Arabia’s intelligence agency, as he is known to have done in the past, in spite of his public criticisms of MBS.In fact, those criticisms would have provided Kashoggi with excellent cover for worming his way into Erdogan’s confidence and inner circle-which in fact Kashoggi did.
If Erdogan had discovered that his supposed friend Kashoggi was spying on him for the Saudis,he wouldn’t have hesited for a moment to have Kashoggi killed, and then blame it on the Saudis.
According to David Goldman (who has a very accurate record of fact finding) your statement ‘Khashoggi’s only crime was expressing his views’ is incorrect. Like Edgar G. says above ‘he was a bad guy’ implying he was not simply a reporter expressing his views. I’m in no way condoning Saudi’s leader’s methods of running a country but I am saying good riddance to Khashoggi and I won’t lose a minute of sleep about him being murdered. Furthermore I doubt that the rest of the world’s leaders who’s thought’s I care about, will not give much thought about it either. Keep your eye on the ball. Iran is the threat. If the Saudi’s can help us defeat Iran, then we can and should play this issue down.
The article keeps talking about “grisly murder” and “dismemberment”. Exactly how was the guy murdered and how did these strange details leak out from the Saudi Embassy.
I don’t care a whit for the guy himself only the implications that the do-gooders have taken upon themselves to spread around the world. By several accounts and actual documentation, he was a bad guy. A problem here s that we have been deluded into expecting MBS to act in the way we do, and not as an Arab, educated or not. A great mistake that we constantly make, causing us our greatest misunderstandings and contributing to many of our political morasses.
As long as it causes no unfixable trouble for Israel or the US I don’t care. If MBS, with a Western education actually became a Godfather in this case, it’s his own fault. But only because of the implications for wider damage, is it culpable. An enemy is an enemy not a friend.
Eventually the whole truth will come out and we’ll be none the wiser nor better off for it.
Imagine, a 60 year old polygamous Arab with a”fiancee”….